


Grovel for Forgiveness

by mggislife2789



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Other, Secret Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 05:38:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10181846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mggislife2789/pseuds/mggislife2789
Summary: Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or their original stories. This is only for fun. It's where my brain goes after the credits roll. No copyright intended. Better safe than sorry. ;)





	1. Chapter 1

No one knew of her reason for coming to the Bureau. And she wanted to keep it that way. It’s not like it was this big secret, but she didn’t feel like bringing it up out of nowhere. If it came up, it came up, and if it didn’t, then she didn’t want people snooping around to find out the answer.

Y/N’s history was fraught with trauma, but through it all she’d made it into the Bureau. Through pure grit and determination, she managed to defy all odds and obtain the job she’d always wanted. Now six months into her work with the Bureau, she would consider herself close with her teammates. The only problem was, that as a profiler, people consciously or unconsciously wanted to know everything about a person so they could figure them out. Y/N would constantly field questions about where she came from before moving to DC, but she’d give them just enough of an answer to get them to let it go.

“Come on, Y/N,” Garcia whined. “I feel like we love you and know you, but we don’t really know you, you know?” 

“What’s to know?!” she exclaimed. All that mattered was that she was a good person, she did her job well, she loved her friends with all her heart. What did it matter if they knew what happened in her past? “Garcia, all you need to know is that I love you all.”

With that, she left for the day. She’d been trying to get a doctor’s appointment for months now, so when she finally got one, she asked Hotch if she could leave early. As she walked into the elevator, Garcia sighed. “I just feel like we don’t really know her. Like, what if she’s a spy?”

“Just because I basically used to be a spy doesn’t mean that Y/N is,” Emily laughed. It would be highly unlikely for two members of the BAU to be former spies. “Although it is curious.”

“Right?!” Garcia said excitedly. “It’s just weird. We know absolutely nothing about her life before. Only who she is now.”

“I mean that’s really all that matters right?” Spencer asked. “We don’t care what happened in Emily’s former life, so why should Y/N’s case be any different. I would just leave it alone.”

As Morgan, Rossi, Garcia, JJ and Emily made their way to Garcia’s office, Spencer backed out. “I don’t want to have anything to do with this. She obviously wants to keep something private, so I’m not going to search into her background if she doesn’t want us to.”

“I respect that,” Emily said. “But something is gnawing at me, so I guess we’re going to try and figure out what she’s hiding.”

While Spencer returned to his desk to do paperwork and Hotch worked in his office, the rest of the team went to Garcia’s office. “Should we really be doing this?” JJ asked.

Garcia typed away on the keyboard, booting up her systems as they debated whether or not to look her up. Morgan and Garcia were especially interested in what Y/N was hiding. “As curious as I am, I don’t think I can do this,” JJ said, walking out of the room.

“Okay, here we go,” Garcia said, typing Y/N’s name into the search engine. The first things to pop up related to her work with he Bureau, getting accepted at such a young age, her degrees from Harvard and Cornell; she was extremely accomplished. But as she dug deeper, Garcia feared they found what she was hiding. “Oh my god.”

“What is it babygirl?”

Her eyes started to tear as she read from the article she found. “Y/F/N Y/L/N, age 10, and younger sister, Michelle, were found cowering in her closet after a masked intruder broke into the family home, stabbing both parents to death. Sources say the young girls were too afraid to come out of the closet for three days until a neighbor came in to check on the family. There are no suspects at this time.”

“Fuck…” Emily said. “That was barely more than a decade ago.” Y/N was only 21 years old. A little younger than Spencer was when he joined the Bureau - the youngest to date.

“That’s probably why she wanted to join the Bureau,” Morgan sighed, suddenly feeling the guilt over looking through her personal life. “She’s probably hoping to track down the monster who killed her parents.”

“We can’t forget we saw this, can we?” Garcia asked. She’d said not to, Spencer and JJ said they couldn’t do it, Hotch probably would’ve yelled at them, but they’d done it anyway and now they knew something they really shouldn’t.

“No, I don’t think we can.”

—–

The next day, Morgan, Garcia, Emily and Rossi felt the weight of their guilt. Hotch had no clue, and Spencer and JJ didn’t ask what the four had found. 

“Hello,” Y/N said as she walked into the Bureau that morning. “We have a case yet?”

“I think so,” Spencer replied, “Hotch is in his office right now.” For profilers, the four offenders were not good at hiding what they knew. None of them would make eye contact with her.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Why is everyone being so quiet?”

“N-No reason,” Garcia said. Rossi, Emily and Morgan rolled their eyes. It was always Garcia that blew it. “Just t-tired.”

“For profilers, you guys really suck at this,” she said. “What is it?”

“It’s just…” Morgan started wanting to take some of the blame off of Garcia. After all, she wasn’t the only one to look into Y/N’s past. “We found something out about you.”

A look of recognition flashed across her eyes before she burst. “You what?!” she screamed. “You looked into my past? What the hell is the matter with you? I told you not to!” The heat rose to her face as Spencer and JJ said nothing and Hotch walked back into the room.

“Told them not to do what? What’s going on here?” he asked, upon seeing Y/N so angry and hurt. 

“They looked into my past!” she screamed. “I told them not to and they did it anyway!”

Emily spoke up, trying to calm her down. “We just had a feeling.”

“What kind of feeling? What the fuck does my background have to do with anything?” she screamed, her eyes brimming with tears. “Fantastic. Well now you know.”

“We don’t,” Spencer said quietly, pointing between him and JJ.

“So it was the four of you?”

They all nodded their heads guiltily. “Y/N,” Rossi said, “We’re sorry.”

“Cool,” she said hotly, “Well considering four of you know, the rest of you might as well. I was 10 and my sister, Michelle, was 5 when someone came into my home and stabbed my parents to death. To this day, he’s still out there. Now you know my big secret! How would you like it if I dug into your days with Interpol, Em? Or Rossi how about your ex-wives, will I find something interesting there? What about Morgan? You want someone digging into your past? Or you Garcia? Hotch, as long as I’m not needed immediately, I’ll meet you on the jet, because if I stay here, I’m going to say something I’m going to regret.”

“We’ll see you on the jet in an hour,” he said quietly as she rushed passed him, her eyes overflowing with tears. “You looked into her past?”

“Reid and JJ didn’t,” Garcia said. “The rest of us did. We just thought she was hiding something, maybe something that could’ve hurt us or the Bureau or something.”

Hotch sighed as he sat down at the table. “I should really suspend the four of you for doing what you did, but we have a case. When we get on the jet though, you all need to apologize and grovel for forgiveness.”

“I don’t know,” Morgan said, as his eyes fluttered closed, “I don’t think I would forgive us.”

“You better hope she does.”


	2. Based on Trust

Spencer, JJ and Hotch had already made their way onto the jet. The rest of them however wanted to put it off as long as possible. They never meant to hurt Y/N, truly. All they wanted was to see what she was hiding, make sure it wouldn’t hurt them. 

None of them ever expected that they’d find out she had such a devastating past. And they felt like assholes - as they should. The guilt had been weighing them down for the past hour. “We really need to get on the jet,” Rossi said. “We’re taking off in less than five.”

“But we hurt her so badly,” Penelope whined. “I never wanted to hurt her. You know me, I never want to hurt anybody. That’s exactly what I was trying to avoid! I wanted to make sure no one got hurt. I thought she was hiding something incriminating or something. I’m a horrible person and she’s never going to forgive me and what if she quits because of us and…”

Morgan grabbed her by the arms as they began to walk toward the jet. “Babygirl, chill. We just have to go in there and explain ourselves and hope for the best.”

—–

“I appreciate that the three of you didn’t decide to join them in their manhunt for dirt,” Y/N said to Spencer, JJ and Hotch. “It’s not as if I was trying to hide it. I just didn’t want the pity. I didn’t want people questioning if that was the only reason I wanted to join the Bureau.”

Hotch placed his hand on her shoulder in a rare show of public affection. “You don’t have to explain anything. If there’s anything we can do to help, let us know.”

“Thanks,” she smiled softly as she looked at the window of the jet to see Rossi, Morgan, Emily and Garcia headed on board. “Oh look, here comes the witch hunting party.” Without another word, she sat down in her seat and put in her headphones, blasting the music in an attempt to drown them out. She knew they were going to try and apologize, but honestly, she wasn’t hearing it right now.

“Did she just put those in?” Morgan asked Spencer as the four perpetrators walked on board. 

Spencer nodded as he sat down across from her. She wasn’t paying attention though. Y/N was off in her own world. “Yea. I wouldn’t suggest trying to talk to her right now. She’s livid.”

—–

They had a nearly five-hour flight and about three hours in Y/N couldn’t take it anymore and got up to use the jet’s bathroom. Morgan pointed to Garcia, Rossi and Prentiss and asked Reid to get up so they could talk to her - before she could put her headphones back in. 

As soon as she came out of the bathroom, she tried to turn away, but Rossi called for her. “Y/N, please,” he said. “Just listen.”

“Why should I?” she said hotly. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see JJ flinch. “Why should I listen to the people who betrayed my trust?”

That’s what broke Garcia and she started sobbing. “Y/N, sweetie. I never meant to hurt you, that was the opposite of what I was trying to do, I thought maybe there was something in your past that could the rest of us, or maybe you.”

“But there wasn’t!” she yelled. “And I told you that! All you had to do was trust me and you didn’t!” As the tears rolled down her cheeks, she brought her hands into her hair and started pulling out of frustration. “That’s what hurts,” she started up again, looking between the four of them through blurry, tear-filled eyes. “Not that you found out about my past. My past is what it is. What hurts is that you didn’t trust me enough to stay out of it. After six months, I love you all like family. Family I didn’t expect to have ever again. Families are supposed to trust each other!”

After her tirade, Y/N blinked the tears out of her eyes and sat down away from the four friends that broke her heart. For a few minutes, they said nothing, but eventually, Morgan stood up and came around to sit across from her again, with Emily, Rossi and Garcia following closely behind. “Look Y/N,” Morgan said, taking her hands in his. “What we did was wrong. We’re sorry.” 

“We didn’t want to hurt you. Our reasoning was wrong,” Emily said. “We believed something we shouldn’t and hurt you in the process. I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Garcia said, cuddling up to Y/N’s side and resting against her shoulder. “Super sorry.”

Rossi chimed in last. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I should’ve known better.”

“Yea you should’ve,” Y/N laughed as she wiped the last of her tears out of her eyes. “You all should’ve. But I know why you did it. It doesn’t excuse anything, mind you, but I do know why you did it. If it was something that could’ve hurt the rest of you, you didn’t want to take that chance.”

They all nodded, knowing it wasn’t an excuse, but that was why they had done it. “So we’re really sorry,” Emily said again. “Can you forgive us? Please?” She and Garcia both brought their hands up to their faces and pouted. 

“Yea,” she laughed. “But on one condition.”

“Anything,” Rossi said earnestly. “What is it?” 

Y/N said nothing - standing up and smacking all four of them upside the head. “That’s my condition. You all deserve to be smacked. Now you’re forgiven.”

“I’d say that was warranted,” Morgan said as he rubbed the back of his head. She hit hard. “Just so you know, you are family. If we can help you find who took your parents’ lives, we will.”


End file.
